How to Start FIFA 13 Ultimate Team

Have you already grabbed a paper and a pencil and started writing the names of the players you want to buy? If you think that you just need players and knowing how to make coins to create a strong club, then you’re very wrong.

Creating a club in FIFA 13 Ultimate Team is a path where each step must be taken with consistance.

In this article we explain how you should start FIFA 13 Ultimate Team in order to achieve your goals without having to spend hours on the trade market.

How to Start FIFA 13 Ultimate Team

FIFA 13 Ultimate Team is a great game. And not just because of its game engine. If it were just because of that, it’s certain that millions of players would choose another game mode. FUT 13’s strength is knowing how to put the manager/fantasy and the game itself in right doses.

But people who think this is a simple game are fooling themselves. If you’re playing FUT for the first time, we advise you to read some articles with the rules of the game first. If you’re familiar with the game, then get to know how to prepare yourself to achieve success.

A lot of people already know what to do in FUT 13 but sometimes forget that the order of the actions is extremely important.

Here’s the list of the tasks we think that are essencial for a good start with your club in FIFA 13 Ultimate Team:

Defining Objectives;

Starting as soon as possible

Selling the cards from the first packs;

Starting trading;

Investing in Contracts;

Hiring Managers;

Acquiring a Stadium with maximum morale;

Defining your Tactic;

Starting your squad;

Playing your first matches in single player mode.

Defining Objectives

It may look unecessary and even too theoreticle but we all should stop for some minutes to idealize what we want from our club. Do we want lots of squads or just one? Is our objective having the best players or experiencing the unknown ones? Will we get to stay with regular players or are we gonna improve them with the IF versions? Will we play with bronze, silver, gold or all kinds of squads? How long will we play? Will we buy packs? How many coins will we need?

The more answers to these questions we can give, the better will be our approach to the game and the better performance we’ll have on the tasks we listed above.

Starting as soon as possible

Starting some days earlier than most players can make a lot of difference. For that you can choose to get the Season Ticket or, if you’re playing FUT 12, start playing on the FUT 13 Web App as soon as possible. The first alternative may be too expensive if you just want to get it so you can start sooner than others. About the Web App, this is kind of mandatory. If you’re coming back from FIFA 12, other than the welcome pack, you’ll receive daily gifts and some packs according to your EST date. It’s too much advantage not to enjoy.

Starting sooner is the first big step toward success. Firstly, the market will still be in search for its balance and you’ll be able to find good deals more easily. Secondly, you have more alternatives to form a squad that is superior to the others’ and with this winning more games, which means getting more coins. Thirdly, you will have time to study the market and enjoy the tassels of rookies in FIFA 13 Ultimate Team. At the end, starting sooner will always be a step ahead from most opponents.

If money is not a problem for you, you always have the alternative to invest in packs or even buying FUT 13 coins with cash. If in your case you couldn’t start playing early, don’t worry because you keep having alternatives to build a good club. They’re not very big, but you still have them.

Acquiring the Season Ticket is one of the methods for having early access to FUT 13.

Selling the cards from the first packs

In FIFA 13 Ultimate Team, like in previous versions, we start with zero coins. This is an obstacle for many players. They receive their welcome pack, start to play and after seven matches they can’t advance because the prizes of the game are not enough to buy contracts.

What one must do to start well is not playing matches too early. Firstly, we sell most of the cards we receive in the beggining. And then, after getting our first coins and performing the other tasks of the list, we can start playing matches.

Start Trading

As soon as our first coins get in our wallet, we should try multiplying them. For a good start, some investiments are needed. But attention, we should never spend everything we got because coins are needed to make more coins. Trading is part of the game and that’s why we should do it since the first until the last day.

The method you use to monetize your wallet is your choice. You’ll be able to get to know them here. The important thing is that the investiment of the first sold cards is very safe. Don’t worry about starting slowly. There’s a whole season ahead. As you start to get rich, reinvest again a big sum of what you’ve earned and put aside some coins for your first cards. If you work things well, after one or two days you’ll be rewarded enough for a good start on FIFA Ultimate Team.

Trading is the best way to get rich.

Investing in Contracts

If a player got injured, you don’t need to apply an injury consumable. Put him on the reserves until they heal. If a player is tired, a fitness card is not the only solution. Give him a rest. If he’s got a low morale, you don’t have to apply him a consumable. You can buy a good stadium, try winning matches or put him on the field often. If a player runs out of contracts, then you have to buy them if you want to keep counting on him. There’s no other solution. That’s why contracts have a big strategic position in FUT 13.

As the player cards are originally placed to circulate with 7 contracts, it won’t take long for you to have to buy and apply contracts. If you do it in the beggining, you’ll have more chances to get good deals since their prices will raise as soon as the other clubs run out of inicial contracts. Buy them as soon as possible but only apply them after the next task.

Contracts are the most important consumables in FIFA 13 Ultimate Team

Buying Managers

Managers are the most important staff in FIFA 13 Ultimate Team. It is simple to realize why. They can be the solution in a category that you should manage very carefully: the contracts.

Because of their strategic position in the game, contracts tend to be extremely expensive. So expensive that many paople can’t save enough coins so they can buy them. But more important than getting cheap contracts is guaranteeing that their effect is potentiated to the maximum. And this can be achieved thanks to the managers.

All rare managers contribute with an increment percentage on the application of contracts: the gold ones with 3%, the silver ones with 2% and the bronze ones with 1%. You can hire managers so that the somatory of these percentages is up to 50%. This means that, when applying a contract card on a player, the number of contracts added is 50% higher. In a long run, this mehod will be extremely beneficial, and in a short run, it allows you to ensure that the prizes of the game will always be superior to the contracts spent. Your squad’s sustainability will be guaranteed.

A problem comes up: the managers are also expensive in the beginning of the game and you don’t have many coins to spend. What you should do is to choose the cheapest rare manager cards to reach the 50%. Unless a good oportunity arises, don’t buy a Mancini, a Wenger, a Fergunson or a Low. Choose well those you’re going to buy and verify, for example, if there aren’t three bronze managers cheaper than a gold one.

This is almost a must do investiment, even because the manager that sits on the bench is the one that spends contracts and only him must have a specific nationality and tactic to benefit the chemistry of the squad.

Acquiring a Stadium with maximum morale

One of the news in FIFA 13 Ultimate Team is how the morale works. It’s harder to maintain the players motivated and this can cost us victories and coins.

A good way to help manage this situation is buying a stadium with a morale boost of +8. It may not solve the whole problem but, for some hundreds of coins, it will give a significative contribution. And even being a low investiment, you can always pick the cheapest stadium among the existing 17 with maximum boost. If we except the affective and graphic parts, the effect of the stadiums on our game is only on the morale.

A good stadium can be a small investiment with a big reward

Defining your Tactic

Before starting to hire players, you should define the tactic you’re going to use. That way you can try buying player cards with the tactic you’ve chosen to use, which will strongly benefit the chemistry of your squad and avoid future expenses in the acquisition of tactic changing cards.

If you still don’t have the experience of previous versions of FUT and don’t know what tactic to choose, try playing some experimental matches and see what’s your game style (like playing by the lateral, prefers a defense with more players, uses line defending, etc). Only after you’ve made up your mind about one of the 16 tactics of FIFA 13 Ultimate Team, you’ll be able to equip your squad with players whose tactics are the one you’ve chosen..

Starting your Squad

According to the objectives you’ve defined on the first task, surely you already have an idea for the squad you wish to have. Probably even elected some players you want to play with. Although, in the beginning you’ll have to be very prudent. After all, this task is the one that will absorb the biggest slice of your budget.

Firstly, it is given that a good chemistry is essencial to reach success, you’ll have to think how you’re gonna link your players. Will they be be all from the same league? Will you try to make a mixed squad? Will the majority have the same nationality?

Restricting the group of players, you can start the search according to the tactic you’ve chosen and the attributes you appreciate more on a player. Having a squad with a good rating is worth nothing if you don’t know how to take advantage of your players and if they don’t fit on your playing mode. According to his price, always give preference to those that have the same tactic as your squad’s and that play on the position you intend to put them in.

If you want to have a good squad in a short time, you’ll have to buy intelligently. And that means knowing the market. For example: if the game is at its beginning, then the big stars will tend to have their prices raised in a short-term, while the players with ratings between 83 and 87 are normally overvalued. If you make the wrong decision, you may mess up you future.

Try to start filling all the places of the squad with medium players that may serve as alternates in the future. Everytime your budget allows you to, buy a player that constitutes an absolute starter. One by one, go building your squad. This way, you’ll have time to analyze the behavior of the following signings on the market and get to buy good players at a lower price.

After hiring players, don’t forget to see the influence they have on the chemistry of your squad

Playing your first matches in single player mode

And finally it’s time to get your club on the pitch. If you already followed all the tips we explained, you can relax because your club has everything to go far. Therefore, you should test your squad before facing strong opponents. For that, the best you can do is playing matches on single player mode. You’ll have the alternative to test the players and their chemistry with the tactic, but more importantly adapting yourself with a new FIFA. But don’t play too many matches. The reason for that is because the match prizes in online mode are superior and in the beginning all coins count.
Another important recommendation is to never give up the matches, even if you are being massacred. If you do, your %DNF will reduce from the initial 1.00 and you will receive less money at the end of each match.

In FUT 13 the match prizes are bigger than on previous versions

Now that you already know how you should start, get your hands on work. If you have questions about these tips, then keep up with MyFUT13 and you’ll realize that it’s not that hard to become rich and successfull in FIFA 13 Ultimate Team.

Born in the late 70s, Rodrigo Lopes is a video game enthusiast. He started on the old ZX Spectrum 48k and has played every FIFA game to present day.
He is an engineer, that also writes about FIFA games on another popular website. Rodrigo is an Ultimate Team expert, he loves football and is a huge Benfica fan. He has influenced thousands of FIFA gaming fans with his cutting edge insights and scientific level approach to writing about FIFA gaming modes. Join him on Google Plus.

87 COMMENTS

“All rare managers contribute with an increment percentage on the application of contracts: the gold ones with 3%, the silver ones with 2% and the bronze ones with 1%. You can hire managers so that the somatory of these percentages is up to 50%. This means that, when applying a contract card on a player, the number of contracts added is 50% higher.”

I don’t understand this point. To obtain +50% in the contrats I have to hire 16 rare gold managers + 1 rare silver manager and sit one of them in the bench???

Hi. Thanks for your comment.
A manager can help you to increase the contract card effect or the team talk card effect. The managers with rare cards help you with the contracts and the others with the morale. In order to get +50% in the contracts, you have to hire rare managers that give you, all together, +50%. You are thinking right. If you hire 16 rare gold managers and 1 rare silver manager, you get +50%. But you can’t. Why? Because there are only 15 rare gold managers. If you want, you can sit one of them on the bench. That one will spend contracts but will also help you to get the 50%. If you still have any question, please ask me.

“All rare managers contribute with an increment percentage on the application of contracts: the gold ones with 3%, the silver ones with 2% and the bronze ones with 1%. You can hire managers so that the somatory of these percentages is up to 50%. This means that, when applying a contract card on a player, the number of contracts added is 50% higher.”
Does this method also apply for staffs, like head coaches, physio, fitness coach, and goal keeper coaches. The more I hired the better???

Thanks for your comment. The goal of having staff in our club is exactly that. You can have 50% more when applying a card. The more you hired the better, until 50%. You can have a full explanation here and here.

Hi. Thanks for your message. You don’t need to follow all the steps of this article. They are merely recommendations. Good ones. If you want to start over fresh, just delete your club (menu squad) and start a new one.

Thanks! We are finalizing several articles about some interesting topics. One is exactly how to do FUT coins. We already have an article about that but this one will be specifically about FUT 13 Coins. Stay tuned!

How can you reduce your DNF, because i keep getting kicked out of games even if i’m winning or losing. When i go back on Ultimate team it says your DNF has gone up which will make me get less coins…. so how can i reduce my DNF or stopped being kicked from the game. EA servers -.-

Hi. That’s a very good question. One of the main FIFA problem are the servers. We already said this in other article. You can always try to change your ISP but we recommend you to try something simple: try to get NAT1. We had the same problem and with NAT1 this never happened.

“All rare managers contribute with an increment percentage on the application of contracts: the gold ones with 3%, the silver ones with 2% and the bronze ones with 1%. You can hire managers so that the somatory of these percentages is up to 50%. This means that, when applying a contract card on a player, the number of contracts added is 50% higher. In a long run, this mehod will be extremely beneficial, and in a short run, it allows you to ensure that the prizes of the game will always be superior to the contracts spent. Your squad’s sustainability will be guaranteed.”

I dont get it. Cant u only assign 1 manager to your team ? And you say that u can put them on bench? how? I dont get it….

Hi. You hire managers to STORE them on your club. They will contribute when you aplying a contract card or a team talk card. One of these managers can sit on the bench and help to improve your squad chemistry. Just go to your active squad, select manager and click add.

Hi Daniel. Thanks for your question. It’s a good question. And the answer is YES. The managers out of contracts contribute on the same way to the contracts and team talk as managers with contracts. You just need contracts to manager that you select to the bench. He is the only one that spends contracts. Thanks again.

Not sure you can help with this but you seem to know alot about how it works.
So i have 3 squads.. two premier legue A & B teams and one Serie A. total i have 33 players i like to use. (the ones on the subs are also the ones on the other squads). The problem is that the Serie A squad for some reason dont get any rest? i have played about 10 games and the stamina is still the same??
thought at first this was because they are the only 11 players in my club that are from Serie A so they dont rest. so i bought Serie A subs and still nothing?
I am out of ideas of what the problem could be.

Hi. We have not sure if we understood well. The problem is that stamina never increase even if you put the tired players on the bench. Right? Or it is the opposite? The stamina never decrease ? We think that it is this second one. If this is really happen to you, it’s a completely new thing to us. And it’s a huge glitch! Thanks to report us and please confirm which one it is.

The problem is that the one time i played with the team they of course get tired but i that they dont rest! i have only played with the Serie A team 3 times in about 2 weeks. since by now thier stamina is all so low they are useless in a game.
So yes this is a huge glitch! spent around 100 000 on a team i cant use…

I have a question; I started FUT today and already have a problem. When I enter single player tournament. When I choose a cup I am told, by a pop up message, that my line-up and subs do not meet min. number of players required. Any fixes to this?

Welcome to the best game mode of the best video game. And welcome to the best FUT website too.
Most of tournaments have requirements. You can see which are the requirements to your tournament before enter in it. For example: if the Gold Cup says that all your players need to be gold, you must to put gold players on the 11 and on the bench.
Keep with us!

I believe I have one missng on bench but I do have 11 starters. It’s strange because I did the tutorial and everything and still gave me that problem and I deleted two clubs already with the same problem.

Hi.
Let’s try to help you.
In our opinion, anyone should have rare managers that boost contract cards up to 50%. If you wanna do it, you should buy enough rare managers (shiny ones) to that effect. But, how much are the sufficient? It’s easy. At the bottom of every manager card you have two lines: contracts and team talk. Pay attention to the number of the first one. You need that the sum of all these numbers of your managers is something like 50%. For example: if you buy 12 rare gold managers (3% each) you will get a boost of 36% when applying a contract card.

Hey, I was wondering, do managers give a boost to the +amount that stadiums give after the game? I want to switch my stadium to other gold ones but I don’t want my bench to go down 1 morale every game because I don’t ever substitute them. Thanks!

It is not exactly as you said. The morale depends of the players, of the match result and of the stadium.
You don’t need a +8 stadium to help morale players. A +6 stadium will help them too but with lower effect.

Hi, I’m looking at making a EPL/Brazilian squad (which can be found here http://www.futhead.com/fifa/squads/5523018/#squad-player ). However I don’t know how to give Neymar 9 chemistry and I know that 9 chemistry is extremely important. I always have a manager yet I am still quite confused as to how they work. Would a Brazilian manager solve this or should I try something else? Thank you

Hi.
Chemistry is a bit confused for everyone and that’s why we are finishing a great guide.
Firstly, individual chemistry is more important than team chemistry. The best is to have individual chemistry 7 to everyone but if some players have 7 it isn’t so bad.
The managers don’t affect individual chemistry. They only contribute to team chemistry. They will give 2 points for each player of the same nationality on the first 11. But Neymar will remains with 7. To improve it to 9 he will need more quaility links. He has 2 weak links in a total of 4. It will be hard to give him 9 individual chemistry since you would need to change one of the two players which he has dead links.
Regards

Hi. My question is about Morale in a stadium. So here is my situation:

I have 1 rare gold stadium, 2 normal silver stadiums and 1 normal bronze stadium. I have kept the rare gold stadium as the active stadium. Should I sell the other stadiums or will they add up the morale?

Thanks for the quick reply. I have one more doubt about club items. How does having a ball help (I have a silver adidas ball)? Does the ball increase anything like morale or fitness or chemistry or something? If not, then is it completely useless? Should I sell it to earn quick money?

You have good questions.
Answering to this one: it is useless. You need to have one active ball. Just it. Why there are different balls? First because gamers love this kind of things; then a player can use to take advantage (a pink ball can be strange to your opponents but if you always play with that ball it isn’t for you); and finally by economic reasons (sponsorships ?).
Sell it.
Regards

Yes, there are people that buy balls. Not many. And there are balls that are more expensive than others.
Buying a bronze ball to sell your silver ball isn’t a great deal. Probably you will sell it by 150c and buy the new one by 150c. You will lose 5% in taxes.
But it is as you said. To sell the silver ball you will need to buy another one and make it active.

Anyways, thanks A LOT for your help. This is the best site ever for Fifa Ultimate Team and the articles really helped me (ive been reading them all for countless hours). Your quick responses in comments make you better than the EA help service.

Hi
I have the ultimate team app on phone. Does anyone know if you can add a contract or fitness to a player from the mobile app? Would be great if there was a way to do this instead of doing it before a game on Xbox?
Thanks

Each version of FIFA Ultimate Team is a different game. As such, you can not import your team and your coins from the previous FUT version . The only things that can move are the name of the team and the level of EXP. For example, even if you have a super team in FUT13, you will have to start from scratch in FUT14.
Usually the return gamers received extra packs. You can sell your FUT 13 team after FUT 14 comes out.

Hi
I haven’t played FIFA 13 before and want to purchase the game, I have played some previous versions of the game but I have never played Ultimate Team gamemode. It looks cool and I’d like to at least try it but the question is: is there a point in starting to play the Ultimate Team from ground zero right now? Because the football season is basically over right now and FIFA 14 will be coming out in a few months time.

We will be honest with you: don’t start playing now. Wait for FUT 14.
If you start playing now, in a few months 90% of the gamers will change to FUT 14 and you will have two options: 1) play with the few that will keep playing FUT 13 (there are people that like this option since the prices are lower); 2) give up of all you have – players, coins, cards, etc – and move to FUT 14.
FIFA U Team Website is the right place to learn how FUT works.
Regards

I recently signed two players a striker and midfielder w High
Ratings. It seems like the midfielder needs a contract to be applied
Every two games? It’s annoying. How do I just sign him long term?

It’s completely different then playing manager mode in career mode where
You can specify length and price of contract.

I’m finding ultimate team to be kind of Boring. You only play tournaments
It’s a pain to get coins, then like I said constant problems with contracts. I had
One player that required a contract every game. I bought whatever left in consumables, then when they ran out I could not do anything else with that exact player. I had to sell him for much less then what he was worth cause I couldn’t use him anymore.

Would it be logical to just play in beginner mode. Not sign anyone or do anything and save coins ?? Or just completely sell the roster as kind of mentioned ??

And is that correct to have good chemistry I need players from
Same countries or leagues ??

Hi!
Ultimate Team is a bit difficult and complicated in the beginning but then it is the best FIFA game mode there is.
If you buy gold contracts to gold players they will be able to perform several matches without renewing. You can also hire managers to boost the contract cards effect. Find more about it HERE.
About chemistry you need players from same league, countries, playing in the right formation and position. Having a gold manager with the right formation and with same nationality of most of players in your starting eleven also helps. You should take a look to our CHEMISTRY GUIDE.
Regards

Hi.
You can sell your manager and buy another one with contracts but it is not the best thing to do.
Just go to your FUT Web App (or console) and browse “auction search” – “development search” and in type select “contracts”. Managers contracts will be among the players contracts.

Please, don’t use CAPS anymore.
If you think that your players get tired very quickly, you should check if they start the matches with the higher fitness possible. If not, you should give them a rest or use a fitness card (and eventually hire a fitness coach to boost these cards).
In the game, some players get tired faster because they have some low attributes as the strength. Try to use other players.
Regards